EDITORIAL: Every Luxury You Flaunt Is Stolen from the Hungry and the Drowning

Every trip abroad, every luxury car, every feast they flaunt is paid for by floodwaters that drowned the poor. Their children eat from plates soaked in the hunger and misery of our people.

There is no greater disgrace than to feed one’s family with money stolen from the hungry, the homeless, the drowning. Yet this is the reality we face. While the poor wade through floodwaters clutching plastic bags of rice, there are officials and contractors who jet off to foreign vacations, buy luxury cars, and flaunt their excesses on social media, all financed by funds meant to save lives.

This is not just corruption. This is moral perversion. To post smiling photographs from Paris while families in Pampanga or Bulacan bail water out of their shanties is not simply tone-deaf. It is an admission of guilt. To dine in glittering restaurants bought with ghost projects is to eat at a table built on human suffering. Ito ay kasakiman at kawalan ng konsensya.

Every peso stolen from flood control is not just money lost. It is a wall not built, a life not saved, a child not rescued. The thieves may wear barongs and suits, but in truth they wear the faces of killers; for every flood death is blood on their hands.

At higit pa sa lahat, sila’y nangangalandakan ng yaman na hindi kanila, habang ang mahihirap ay nakalublob sa putik at gutom. And to flaunt such wealth as though it were honorably earned? That is the final insult to a people betrayed. It is a mockery of decency, a slap across the face of every Filipino who toils honestly, pays taxes faithfully, and suffers quietly.

As JCI Manila members, we cannot be silent. Ours is a legacy built on service, on civic duty, on the belief that leadership is a privilege, not a license to plunder. We condemn those who gorge on stolen billions while the poor starve and drown. Those who steal disaster funds and parade their fortunes are not leaders, not businessmen, not public servants. They are plunderers of the people, enemies of the poor, and criminals against the nation. We stand with the families who suffer, and we call on every citizen to demand justice, to break the cycle of impunity, and to rebuild not only infrastructure, but integrity.

For what is the worth of progress if its foundations are rotted with corruption? What is the meaning of leadership if it fattens the few while abandoning the many?

You may live in mansions and travel the world but you cannot wash away the truth: your wealth is soaked in the tears of the poor, and your children eat from plates paid for by human misery.